As we continue to mobilize the American people to join our national campaign to force the issue of Glass-Steagall and the necessity to return to the principles of Alexander Hamilton, the policies of LaRouche are now gaining steadily increasing hegemony, both on the national and international stage. If you haven’t yet signed up, do so now, and become a part of shaping history, at: http://action.larouchepac.com/fourlaws

TRANSCRIPT

MATTHEW OGDEN: Good evening, it’s October 28, 2016. My name is Matthew Ogden, and you’re joining us here for our Friday evening webcast from larouchepac.com. I’m joined in the studio tonight by Jeffrey Steinberg from Executive Intelligence Review, and we have via video, Kesha Rogers, a member of the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee, former candidate for the United States Congress and United States Senate, joining us from Houston, Texas.

I think it can be said that we are at a very dramatic turning point in world history and a very dramatic turning point for our nation. Over the last several weeks, as you’ve been following the LaRouche PAC website, we have mobilized a national mobilization to put on the agenda Mr. Lyndon LaRouche’s economic program; this is under the name of “The Four Cardinal Laws; the Four New Laws for the Economic Recovery of the United States”, and it’s grounded in the fundamental principles of Alexander Hamilton and his work establishing a science of economics which built the United States. We have launched a mobilization page, and I’ll say right up front that our agenda is to bring the American people into this mobilization to deepen your understanding of what the economic principles are that Hamilton created; and what Mr. LaRouche has embodied in these Four Laws.

This is not something which is only important for the national stage; but this is shaping a paradigm shift which is currently ongoing on the international stage. We saw two weeks ago the dramatic shift, the realignment of the Philippines with President Duterte’s trip to China; saying that he is realigning his country with the ideological flow of the Eurasian allied countries that are now creating a new economic paradigm. And we saw this expressed very clearly in a speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave at the 2016 annual Valdai international discussion club proceedings. We’ll get into some of the details of that, but Putin’s emphases are very clear, and I think they include some of the subjects that we will be discussing here tonight. Number one, the danger of the NATO/Obama posture which has now brought us perilously close to the outbreak of World War III; a war that nobody is seeking on the Russian side, as Putin made very clear. And also, the urgent necessity of an entirely new economic paradigm to bridge the gap between a small number of very wealthy Wall Street speculators and a very large number of poverty-stricken, not only people, but also nations; and to bring technological progress to all, and to have that be the paradigm for relations among nations.

So, we’ll get into those subjects, but I think first and foremost, the issue of Glass-Steagall; the necessity of shutting down what is now clearly the bankrupt Wall Street regime, and what has to necessarily follow after that. The Hamiltonian Four Laws that Mr. LaRouche has specified, I think is now very clearly on the agenda. So, I’m going to ask Jeff to just start with a quick briefing of some of the matters that we’ve discussed with Mr. LaRouche over the last 24 hours, and then we can proceed with a discussion of the implications of these developments.

JEFFREY STEINBERG: Thanks, Matt. I think that there are four or five things that I would really highlight in terms of significant new developments just in the time since last Friday’s broadcast. Number one, as Matt indicated, President Putin delivered a very powerful speech at the closing session of the Valdai conference that took place this week in Sochi, Russia. There were representatives there from all over the world, including at least a number of people there from China. I think what President Putin did was not so much break new ground, but make very clear that Russia and he himself are fully committed to moving ahead with the collaboration with China, with the other BRICS countries on bringing about a new paradigm of relations among nation-states; based on a policy of clear war avoidance built around cooperative economic investments in great projects — including major advances in science, including the advancement of man’s mastery over space. So, Putin in a certain sense, reinforced what we saw at the G20 meeting in Hangzhou in China; what we saw at the BRICS heads of state summit meeting more recently in Goa, India. So, Russia is all-in on that, and he made the point very clearly, that the collapse of the Western financial system is the principal factor driving the world towards an extraordinarily dangerous situation, where you could have an outbreak of world war — even thermonuclear world war — as the result of provocative actions born of desperation. I think that whole picture is one element of what’s really changed in this last week.

Now, I spent the last 48 hours — Wednesday and Thursday of this week — attending an annual conference in Washington, DC of the National Council on US-Arab Relations. There were about 1000 people there, and it was widely attended by the diplomatic community, particularly the Arab diplomatic community; by the US business sector that deals with the Gulf States. At the very closing of the conference, Thursday evening, there was a concluding keynote presentation by General David Petraeus — formerly the head of the Central Command, formerly the Director of the CIA. He made a very bold set of proposals that unfortunately dovetailed very precisely with the kinds of things that have been coming out of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign throughout this Presidential election. What General Petraeus called for was both the creation of safe zones inside Syrian sovereign territory, the creation of a no-fly zone over a large portion of Syrian territory, and he called for the United States to use both sea-based and air-based cruise missiles to knock out the Syrian air force. Now, he very cavalierly said of course this brings on the danger of a war with Russia; but he brushed that aside, saying, Vladimir Putin responds to power, and responds to serious threats to use power. Therefore, in the face of these kinds of actions, Putin will back down.

Now, we’re talking about American and Russian air assets engaging in a very limited theater of action, where we’ve so far avoided a major incident that could have led to general war because of a deconfliction agreement that fortunately still remains in force between the US-led coalition on the one side, and Russia on the other. But what’s being proposed here is a complete overturning of that policy. We know that this is exactly what Hillary Clinton is calling for in her own Presidential campaign speeches. There have been recent studies presented on behalf of the Clinton campaign by the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, that go almost as extremist as General Petraeus’ statements. Basically, the war danger cannot in the least underestimated; and the fact is that President Putin — in his Valdai speech — was very clear about that danger.

Now, on the larger issue of the immediacy of the blow-out of the financial system of the trans-Atlantic region, everybody is really on the edge of their chairs over the fact that the US Department of Justice and Deutsche Bank are still parrying around back and forth and have not reached a decision yet on a proposed 14 billion euro fine for Deutsche Bank’s criminal activity during the mortgage-backed securities crisis leading into the 2008 blow-out. Deutsche Bank is on the edge of collapse; it’s widely acknowledged. The major German financial press, led by Handelsblatt, writes about this virtually every day. We know that the Italian banking system is also on the verge of a blow-out with 360 billion euro in non-performing debt on the books of the larger Italian banks. So, it is absolutely true that we’re on the precipice of a potential financial blow-out far worse than Lehman Brothers in 2008.

It’s in that context, that I think it’s very important to take note of the fact that earlier this week, Donald Trump delivered a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which he explicitly called for the implementation of a 21st Century Glass-Steagall. He also warned that if Hillary Clinton is elected President, the chances grow enormously that we will be facing World War III at some point very soon; and he cited the Syria events that I’ve already talked about as a kind of a key element of that situation. Many people are scratching their heads and saying, where did this from in terms of Trump suddenly coming out for Glass-Steagall? It’s only 12 days before the Presidential election that this speech came out.

I had the opportunity to someone who’s been involved in Washington politics as a kind of insider for a very long time; and his view was that he was expecting something like this to come out of the Trump campaign, out of Donald Trump. It could have been more effective if it had happened in September, but whether he’s being opportunistic or whether he genuinely means it, the fact is that the Glass-Steagall issue has now been basically re-infused into the Presidential elections at a critical kind of countdown moment before November 8th. And there’s really no downside to that. Whatever the outcome of the election, Glass-Steagall is an essential policy issue that must be implemented immediately. It’s the first step of Mr. LaRouche’s Four Cardinal Laws for how to carry out an economic recovery; and Mr. LaRouche’s Four Cardinal Laws on based explicitly on the four key reports to Congress by Alexander Hamilton when he was Secretary of the Treasury. So, we’re reaching back for policies that have a long-time proven track record of success. Donald Trump didn’t just simply blurt out “Let’s have Glass-Steagall.” By accounts of people who closely watched that speech down in Charlotte, this was the most thoroughly composed and well organized speech of his entire Presidential campaign. The next morning, in a TV interview with Fox, Wilbur Ross, who is one of a group of “billionaires” who are key economic policy advisors to Trump, basically reinforced the point that Trump had made the day before in Charlotte. This is a bit of an exchange between Fox News’ Maria Bartolino and Wilbur Ross:

BARTOLINO: Donald Trump yesterday called for a 21st Century version of the 1933 Glass-Steagall law that requires the separation of commercial and investment banking. Talk to us about this, because we all know what Dodd-Frank has done to the financial services sector; and lending has become tougher. That’s become one of the issues for this economy. Tell me about the 21st Century version of Glass-Steagall.

Ross was absolutely clear and familiar with what Trump was referring to the night before. He said:

ROSS: Well, the banks. It isn’t so much that they’re too big; it’s that they’re too complex. Too complex and too complicated internally. Think about how much the big banks — you have to know every geography in the world; you have to know every kind of obscure kind of product in the derivatives market. That’s an awful big menu for anybody to absorb. We think it might be better for the banks to stick to lending, and instead of making more restrictions on lending, make it easier for them to make loans. Think about it. When you were suing banks every day for the loans that they’ve made the day before, it’s not the way to encourage them to make new loans. They’re making banks gun-shy.

And she asks, “Are you saying there should be more separation?”

ROSS: I think the more important thing is sensible regulation rather than just regulation for the sake of regulation. When you think about it, with all these fines over sub-prime lending, can you name a single person who was ever dispossessed from a house that didn’t actually have a mortgage, wasn’t delinquent on it and deserved to be foreclosed? There isn’t one case where that’s been proven, so it’s punitive regulation, it’s punitive law enforcement rather than anything very sensible.

This was clearly not just simply a stab in the dark. We don’t know whether this is a serious commitment to the policy. But we do know that there is mass popular support for Glass-Steagall. That’s why it wound up in the platforms of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. We know there was a fight inside the Hillary Clinton campaign, in which a number of her key advisors urged her to also come out and support Glass-Steagall, which she refused to do. The Bernie Sanders supporters, the Elizabeth Warren supporters, those who are mainstay voters for the Democratic Party, are as adamant about the need for Glass-Steagall as some on the Republican side.

So, the issue is that this now squarely on the table. It’s the final ten days before the Presidential elections, and so therefore, now is the moment for this issue to be driven home, forcefully, and for Congress to take this up as their first order of business when the return after the November 8th elections, regardless of the outcome. The mandate is there. It’s now a fundamental issue in the Presidential debate in these closing days. Again, whether Trump is serious about this, or this was a political stunt, nevertheless, the issue has been injected very substantially into the final moments of this Presidential campaign, and there’s no downside to that having happened.

OGDEN: Mr. LaRouche’s ideas are very powerful, and they stand on their own. Mr. LaRouche has not responded to the change of the time. He has been very, very clear for years, on the urgent necessity of Glass-Steagall, and has forecast that we would in fact reach this point again. Deutsche Bank is blowing out. It’s worse than Lehman 2008. The fact that Glass-Steagall was not reinstated, as Mr. LaRouche called for, immediately following the 2008 crash, is what has brought us to this point. Kesha was involved in a high-profile Senate campaign, several high-profile House campaigns. Other members of the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee also ran for federal office four, six years ago, on a Glass-Steagall platform, and made that the definitive national issue. To the extent that there’s been any serious discussion in this Presidential campaign, it has been around the question of Glass-Steagall. This was brought up in the Democratic debates by two candidates — Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders also brought it up; Hillary Clinton said, “No!”

This is now the defining question. And as you said, Jeff, what this shows is that there is overwhelming popular support: both Party platforms. Now you have a situation in which the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall is virtually hegemonic. It would be tragic were the Congress not to take the immediate action to reinstate this — do not wait for the inauguration — immediately after returning to Washington. Glass-Steagall has got to be reinstated, because if we wait, and Deutsche Bank or one of these other banks blows out, I guarantee you, we are in a far worse situation that we were, even in the Crash of 2008.

So I think the defining question is there. The necessity for the depth of the Hamiltonian principles — which Mr. LaRouche has made very clear — stand on their own. It’s not a question of has somebody validated Lyndon LaRouche; the question is Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas stand on their own, and have been the defining questions, and have now reached the point where it’s undeniably hegemonic, and the point of no return is coming very soon, unless these ideas are acted on.

STEINBERG: Let me throw something else in on this. I think there’s an important lesson to be learned from the just-concluded, successful fight over the summer into September, around first, the release of the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11; and then what followed after that, with the overwhelming House and Senate override of President Obama’s veto of the JASTA Bill, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. As was the case for some time with JASTA, the issue is that once it was going to come to a vote, there was no question that there was overwhelming support for it. There was a political mobilization. LaRouche PAC led that fight, along with the families and survivors of 9/11, and others as well, to make sure it was actually brought to a vote. The same is true of Glass-Steagall right now. There’s got to be a groundswell of pressure on the leadership of the House and Senate, to bring it to a vote.

I have no doubt whatsoever that given all of the factors that we’ve been discussing, that if a vote were allowed to be taken, say on November 14-15, whatever it is the day that the House and Senate return to Washington for the beginning of the “lame duck” session, that should be on the table. It should be brought to the full floor of the Senate and the House. The bills exist in both Houses. The language is compatible. This could be done in a very short period of time. If you look at the way that the JASTA vote proceeded just before the recess, the whole thing took place in the course of one day. There was a morning vote and debate in the House. It went immediately to the Senate in the afternoon; because the leadership recognized that the American people demanded that this happen. There was a mobilization. There was a sense of timing. And there is no reason in the world that the same thing can’t happen before the middle of next month with respect to Glass-Steagall.

As Matt just said, and as Thomas Hoenig, [vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] has been arguing for years, Glass-Steagall has to be put in place before the blow-out, because once you get that blow-out, Congress will be stampeded by Wall Street and London into another bail-out, and you’re going to be off to the races. It’s going to be a disaster.

This is something where the will of the American people has to be heard. That’s the context in which we’re looking at the fact that Trump chose at the last moment to inject Glass-Steagall into his campaign rhetoric for the final countdown days before the election.

KESHA ROGERS: Yes. I think it’s important to understand that LaRouche “drew the line in the sand” a long time ago. He set the standard of the Glass-Steagall representing the first step to bringing down Wall Street, this financial speculation, and the continued protection and defense of Wall Street, of this British imperial system of the City of London, meant the death of the nation and society as a whole, because we’re seeing what this is doing to impact the United States through the continued economic collapse that’s devastating the entire nation, the rate of increase in poverty. This has all been a product of Wall Street’s total destruction of our nation.

And so, this fight for Glass-Steagall — LaRouche has led it in the highest terms possible, because it represents a saving of the American people. It’s the identity of what has to shape the future for this nation. I think it’s really important that, as we’ve continued to have discussions with Mr. LaRouche — the Policy Committee and others — he defined very clearly that the issue at hand is, what is going to be necessary and the standard set for creating a standard by which credit is defined. And this is what he has gone back to, with implementing the Hamiltonian standard for the United States and for the world with his Four Laws. Representing the context by which we can instill in the American people a standard of economic value which is not based on money, not based on the idea that you can just pump money into small infrastructure projects here and there. But he made very clear that you have to have an international program based on the principle of a credit policy as Alexander Hamilton understood — and this is why he has been very emphatic; that the American people have to read, master and understand the works of Hamilton today as never before. This is what Franklin Roosevelt understood. People are adopting and taking up the policy for restoring Glass-Steagall which LaRouche has made a household name. Franklin Roosevelt really understood the enemy. He understood that this house of cards of Wall Street was crumbling, it had to be brought down; just as LaRouche understands today. Many people who’ve put their name on the docket for Glass-Steagall have been called by Wall Street “Public Enemy Number One,” and so forth.

How do we really look at this, from the standpoint of what we’re dealing with a population that has lost a sense — and Mr. LaRouche really captured this today, very profoundly — of their own mind; the ability of their own mind to actually know how to fight this enemy and know how to create the future which they so desperately desire and need? What you really see right now is that they’re being given an opportunity to participate in something very profound and unique. If we look at what’s being presented by LaRouche’s policies being adopted throughout the world right now, the standard that’s been set in China. The standard for the future that’s been set in Russia to defy and to deny this policy of thermonuclear war and destruction. Of going after the future and the youth of the nation, that the international standard that’s being set right now for a program based on these Hamiltonian principles, can clearly be seen by what China is doing and actually representing for a total revolution, total renaissance for generations to come, in the standards they’re setting with their space program.

Because when Mr. LaRouche said you have to have an international program that defines an economic standard of value, of credit, in this nation and across the planet, that’s the first thing to look at. The fact that China just launched a new initiative, a total breakthrough putting them front and center stage in the development of their space program; when Obama has continued to kill the space program with the egregious budget cuts, with the turning over our space program to the private sector in the United States. The policy to continue to bail out Wall Street financial speculation instead of actually giving a national mission, as Kennedy understood was absolutely important, is something that can no longer be tolerated.

The inspiration is the crucial key at hand right now. People have lost faith and confidence and inspiration in this nation, in the system of this nation, because it has become a system of gambling, of debt, and it has gone away from the principles which were defined by our US Constitution. So when you look at the inspiration you’re seeing from China, with the just launching of their spacecraft with two tyconauts from China, the Shenzhou-11 to dock with the Tiangong-2 space lab, what we have now seen China do is to actually create an international process of collaboration and development. Just as they’ve offered for the United States to cooperate, in a win-win strategy for the Silk Road, which nations around the world are taking up. This is defining a new standard of value and wealth.

Now, what’s the standard in the United States? Jeff can say more on this, because he just did a presentation that I would encourage people to look at on the website. It’s death. The drug overdoses. If you don’t have a policy of inspiration for your youth and for the nation, what are people going to turn to? What is going to be the standard and value and the understanding of the creativity, the creative potential of their own minds? I’ll just say, before I got on this discussion, I was speaking to a lady 40 years old; she has a 23-year old son who she’s paying thousands of dollars to get him off of drug overdoses from prescription medicines and pills. Three of his friends who she knows very closely just died within the last year of drug overdoses from heroin. First starting with painkillers, then finding this heroin, just as you said, Jeff. Because people have been denied a future that they can have a sense of their truly human identity; that they have a purpose and reason to live. Wall Street can and must be brought down, because the fight that was won with JASTA was just the beginning. If we don’t finish off this policy of the British Empire and the Saudis funding of terrorism and funding of drug epidemics in the United States coming from Afghanistan, the drug trafficking, everything we’ve been seeing as the destruction of this nation, then we won’t have a nation. We’re seeing that very rapidly take place; this dark age has to be stopped.

I think a lot of people are understanding that LaRouche is giving them an opportunity for life and for determining and fighting for a future.

OGDEN: Yeah, I do want Jeff to say more about that interview, that short statement that he posted on the website. Let me just underscore what you just said; I think it’s extraordinarily important. People lack the confidence in their own mind; they lack the confidence in their own ability to positively imagine and create and define a future. What comes in the void of that? It’s anger, it’s fear, it’s demoralization. Our job is to give people their dignity back. We have to give them the confidence in themselves as meaningful human beings. I think that was very clearly demonstrated with what we accomplished — the Schiller Institute along with the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture — with this extraordinary series of concerts over the weekend of the 15th anniversary of September 11th in New York City. This was a presentation of Mozart’s Requiem and four African-American spirituals at four different venues across New York City and New Jersey. The confidence and the dignity that gave to people, including people who were engaged as you said, Jeff, in the fight, the victorious fight to declassify the 28 pages and to pass the JASTA bill and override the White House’s veto, I think speaks directly to that point.

Coincidentally, there’s one very short passage in this speech that Putin gave at the Valdai discussion which says almost exactly what you just said, Kesha. He said, “It is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and a lack of ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but rather, frightens them.”

So, our job is to create a potential for a future which entices the creative dignity of people and allows them to escape this — as you eloquently said — dark age of drug overdoses, death, and depression.

STEINBERG: I think it’s important to also take note of the fact that just in the past two weeks, millions of American households have received word that their Obamacare health insurance premiums are going up by 20%, 30%, 50%, in some cases I know of directly, 70-80%. The administration was facing a torrent of news coverage admitting that Obamacare was finished. Insurance companies are pulling out of the pools, and Obama came out with this completely vacuous, lying statement claiming he’ll create some kind of a federal pool so that people can get reasonably-priced health insurance. The fact of the matter is, at the very outset of this whole business, Obama shut the door on expanding Medicare for all; shut the door on any other formulation of a single-payer plan. The cutbacks in the amount of money being spent on health care has meant that by Hill-Burton standards — in other words, the physical requirements; how many hospital beds, how many doctors, how many nurses, what kinds of specialty care have to be made available — the physical infrastructure of health care has collapsed under Obama, as people are finding their rates skyrocketing through the ceiling. Obama personally came out with another lie to cover for the reality of what he created; namely claiming that the premium increases for most people will be covered by increases in taxpayer subsidies. But what he failed to say was that the only people who qualify for those subsidies are people who are living at or below one and a half times the poverty rate. So, anybody in the middle class, anybody even barely above that 1.5 times the poverty rate is out of luck; and they’re being confronted with a choice — health care vs. housing; health care vs. food; in many, many cases health care vs. whether you can get your kids a college education. So, you’ve got that phenomenon that’s staring the American people in the face; it’s the collapse and disintegration of Obamacare, which is what Lyndon LaRouche warned about and forecast all the way back in 2009 when this thing was first started.

Then you’ve got the second phenomenon. Remember that President Obama, during his initial campaign for office back in 2008, basically distanced himself from the Bush-Cheney Iraq war, but took full ownership of the Afghanistan war; which he called a war of necessity as opposed to a war of choice. Well, we’re now eight more years into it, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime last week came out with a report that Afghanistan — under US and NATO occupation — has produced a bumper crop of opium; up 43% to 4800 tons of pure opium produced this year. We know the consequences of that; cheap heroin is flooding onto the streets of the United States in every community, not just inner-city ghetto areas, but middle-class suburbs, rural areas. There is not a county in the United States that is not experiencing an opioid epidemic; and that’s not our words, those are the words of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention — “epidemic”.

You’ve had a major increase every year under Obama of deaths by opioid overdoses. It goes hand-in-glove with the shutdown of the health system, the flooding of the country with illegal drugs, the refusal of the Obama administration, number one, to crack down on HSBC — the British Opium War bank that was caught by the United States Senate as the number one drug-money launderer for the Latin American drug cartels. Nothing was done; a slap on the wrist. They’ve even violated the deferred prosecution agreement, but we hear nothing about the consequences. Secondly, the big pharmaceutical companies and the major drug distribution companies are flooding the black market with oxycontin and other opioids. This is also being done under the watchful eye of the Department of Justice that has refused to prosecute big Pharma and these big drug distribution companies for the same argument that they make why they won’t prosecute and criminally jail major bankers; they’re too big to jail. The too-big-to-fail banks, the giant pharmaceutical companies that are pumping out these opioids; they are above the law, at least under the policies of the Obama administration.

So, you’ve got a track record of death, destruction, and despair emanating from the policies of the White House for the past eight years. Now we are at a crisis point, a social and economic crisis, a crisis of the morale of the population; yet there are clear and obvious solutions to all of these problems. It doesn’t take brain surgery to figure out that Glass-Steagall and the other core principles put forward by Mr. LaRouche, which are a revised version of the core ideas on which this economy of this great nation was built in the first place, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton. So, these things can be done. One of the biggest obstacles is the fact that the collapse of the health care system, the mass opioid addiction that’s been basically allowed to occur as an Opium War against the American population, has reached the point where it’s created a morale crisis. And that’s got to be reversed.

Matt just referenced the impact of the concerts commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that took place in the greater New York City area the weekend of September 11th. Those kinds of things can be replicated everywhere. We can turn the situation around very quickly. We can end the scourge of Wall Street and the City of London; we can end these wars. You’ve got with Russia, with China, with India, with the other countries in Asia — Japan, Southeast Asia; they’re all coming together around a new economic paradigm that’s built on cooperation among nations for great projects across a vast area. The United States desperately needs to get in on this; and President Xi Jinping’s standing invitation, delivered to President Bush face-to-face, still stands. The United States should join in and become part of this World Land-Bridge process; and if you do that, then the folly of these continuing wars and this confrontation with Putin and Russia become very obvious. It’s completely ludicrous. We can move on and participate in this alternative paradigm which is right there; it’s not a theoretical, it’s not something in abstraction. It’s going on every day of the week across all of Eurasia down into Africa. China is building a trans-continental railroad across South America. The plans for that railroad were in place in the 1870s, when American rail engineers who worked on the transcontinental railroad in the United States, went down to Peru, and went down to Brazil, and were working on those projects. The time is long overdue for the United States to get on board on something that we, as a nation, forged as key concepts back during a better period in our history.

ROGERS: And what you’re dealing with is a cultural transformation. I just wanted to add that this is not something that is up to people “Oh, this is a problem I’m having in my family. The drug overdose or something that I have to deal with.” You have people who have health care premiums that are going up to $1500-2000 per month, and then they’re spending thousands of dollars to get their kids and loved ones off of these drugs, and you have no help from society because the society is completely degenerating. It’s only going to be through a cultural transformation based on the beauty that was exemplified and continues to be exemplified by what we’re representing with these Requiem concerts in New York; with a commitment towards a revival of truly Classical culture. One person I was talking to, who was going through such a crisis, was saying it would just be so beautiful and so important if you can come into my area to sing; because these people desperately need beauty. It’s not going to just take each individual; but as Putin recognized, you have to have a total transformation of the culture. I was just thinking at the very end, that Matt you brought up a few quotes earlier of this speech, and I don’t want to read long quotes; but I think this captures what we were just discussing very well. At the very end of Putin’s speech at Valdai in Sochi, he said: “In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development. And of course, it is necessary to continue a broad-based discussion of our common future, so that all sensible and promising initiatives are heard.”

This is absolutely what has to be the standard of the United States right now; shaping that future that must be brought into existence.

OGDEN: Yeah, I would recommend people read some more extensive excerpts of this speech; it’s very all-encompassing. But at the same place where he said what you just cited, he called for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the war-torn areas — especially in the Middle East and North Africa; but a Marshall Plan type of approach. He called for a New International Economic Order, which would make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. He celebrated the joining together of the Eurasian Economic Union with the New Silk Road, the One Belt, One Road policy of China, to create an integrated Eurasian space where these kinds of massive development projects can take place, as Jeff just cited. He said that the major question, the principle, has got to be how do you develop human potential? He said, “An important task of ours is to develop human potential. Only a world with ample opportunities for all, with highly-skilled workers, with access to knowledge, and a great variety of ways to realize their potential, can be considered truly free. Only a world where people from different countries do not struggle to survive, but lead full lives, can be stable.”

I would recommend going back and reading some of the excerpts from Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures”, because he makes exactly the same point. He says it’s only a world where the diverse talents of the various of your society can be developed to their fullest potential through the application of technology, and the availability of this on the widest possible scale, that you can create the future potential for the creative labor, not just the manual labor, but the creative labor of your labor force, of your workforce, of your citizenry, which increases the potential population density of your nation; increases the productive powers of that labor force, and improves the quality of the lives of all. And only a society like that can be defined as truly free. In Hamilton’s time, it was the fight against slavery; it was the fight against the manual, bestial labor of the African slaves imported to the southern states of the United States. In our time, it’s the fight for a Hamiltonian policy in the present period; and I think we just keep coming back to the point. This is the Four New Laws of LaRouche; this is the principle of Alexander Hamilton. It is happening on the international stage, as Jeff said. The One Belt, One Road policy from China; this new economic paradigm; these are taking place every single day.

The defining question is: Will the United States join that New Paradigm?

STEINBERG: It’s ironic that one of the cornerstones, in light of what’s going on in the real guttural side of this Presidential campaign, one of the cornerstones of Hamilton’s concept in the “Report on Manufactures” was immigration; mass immigration. His policy was, bring ’em in; we’ll educate them; we’ll make productive American citizens out of them, no matter where they come from. That idea that there’s always a shortage of precious creative labor. I think it’s another point very much worth reflecting on; rather than thinking about walls and things like that. He just said, we’ve got to bring more people in here; because we’ve got productive work for them to do to build a nation.

OGDEN: Right; apropos. I just want to read the one section from the Putin speech where he says this specifically. He says, “We cannot achieve global stability unless we guarantee global economic progress. It is essential to provide conditions for ‘creative labor’ and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers.”

On that note, I want to just announce to people that Executive Intelligence Review is putting out a republication of the four economic reports of Hamilton. These will be available in book form, hopefully coming up the beginning next week. It’s titled, Alexander Hamilton’s Vision, and it’s a republication of these four central economic reports; the “Report on Public Credit”, the “Report on Manufactures”, the “Report on National Banking”, and Hamilton’s argument “On the Constitutionality of the National Bank”. As an appendix to that book, we also include the full text of Mr. LaRouche’s new economic laws. That is also the headline of a special double edition of the Hamiltonian which came out at the beginning of this week — “The Four New Laws to Save the USA Now!” This is edition 10 of the Hamiltonian, and included in this is also an elaboration of some of the principles of the “Report on Manufactures”, which I wrote up; “The LaRouche-Hamilton Science of Physical Economy”, and there’s also an article on the background of Alexander Hamilton’s fight against slavery and his establishment of a new political order for the United States through the founding of this science of economics. There’s also a very entertaining cartoon which was drawn by a member of the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee, Dave Christie, called “Obamandias” based on “Ozymandias” which was a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. So that’s available on the LaRouche PAC website.

So, I think we have definitely defined the fact that we are at a turning point in the history of this country and the history of the world. This is certainly not business as usual; and the hegemony of the principles that Mr. LaRouche has put on the table as the urgent steps to create an economic recovery for this country now, has certainly been demonstrated very clearly. It’s our job to continue to draw people towards the mobilization page on the LaRouche PAC Action Center; this is actioncenter.larouchepac.com/four laws. You can sign up directly on that website; you will receive an email, you will become part of our national network of activists. You can participate in the weekly activists calls that we hold every Thursday night — our Fireside Chats. You can submit reports of activities that you’ve engaged in. You can have all of the background material available there — Hamilton’s four economic reports are linked on that page — and you can become part of this movement which is clearly defining world history.

So, thank you very much, and I’d like to thank both Jeff and Kesha for joining us here today. Please stay tuned to larouchepac.com. Thank you and good night.